Vine can get a bit repetitive. The same jokes, the same memes, the same people. So how about some TIGERS to liven things up?

This is where Derek Krahn comes in. He works at the Center for Animal Research and Education (CARE) in Bridgeport, Texas, and posts Vines of the more than 50 animals who live there, including snow leopards, mountain lions, African lions, tigers, black and spotted leopards, ring-tail lemurs, and a coati.

Krahn's Vine account, BigCatDerek, has attracted more than 400,000 followers who can't get enough of the majestic creatures he looks after.

There is quite a cast of characters at CARE. Luca the tiger is adorable. But he tells awful jokes.

There is Milo the leopard.

Krahn tells BuzzFeed that he started tweeting about the cats in 2009, and started Vining when the Vine app came out for Android in June 2013. For months he only had about 30 followers, but in November the Weekly Whiskers Vine account and a few other influential Viners started re-Vining his clips, and his account’s popularity has spiralled from there.

There's Melita the singing tiger.

"Before I put stuff on social media I was privy to all these moments that were either really funny or scary and we were the only people who got to experience them," Krahn says.

“The cats all know me and trust me. I can engage with them. It’s a weird thing – people come on tours and see the cats but get no response. It’s only after years and years with them that they have come to respect me."

Such cuteness is unprecedented.

But Krahn is under no illusion that the big cats he deals with are not predators, and says he has a constant sense of the danger involved.

"You have to have that sense – if you don’t, you shouldn’t be working with these animals," he says. "You have to realise that they are animals that act on instinct, with very strong emotions, and are capable of doing some terrible, terrible things. It’s just in their nature.

"There are people who see these animals as pets, but they are very, very misinformed. They want this relationship with a kindred spirit that just isn’t there."

Even Mwali the lion, whom Krahn has known from birth, “absolutely could kill me. Some people have this idea that if you raise them from cubs they somehow magically stop being lions and tigers."